News & Research Updates on our Publications about the American Cinematographers and Films of World War I

Monday, August 31, 2015

"On the Firing Line with the Germans" (1915) Now Ready For Pordenone

Durborough meets a German General. Frame from his war film

Word has reached us that the Library of Congress has finished the restored feature documentary World War I film On the Firing Line with the Germans (1915) by Wilbur H. Durborough, the American camera correspondent who accompanied the German offensive on the eastern front in the summer of 1915.

Out of the original footage found at the Library of Congress and the National Archives, with additional input and film found by the authors during our research for our latest book American Cinematographers in the Great War, the staff of the Library of Congress has edited a restored digital copy running 1:48 minutes. The new film will be shipped to Pordenone, Italy, for a premiere exhibition during its Silent Film Festival in October 2015, one hundred years after the film was first shown in the United States.